Pull Back the Curtains
by IronicNarwhal
Summary: "Just promise you won't freak out, okay?"


It's been five months now and Jean is not sure how Eren manages to at the same time go to bed later than him and wake up earlier than him. He would think that a guy who sometimes stays up half the night writing papers at the last moment, or else doing something pointless on his computer would have greater sleep requirements. But in the four months they've been _dating-dating_ (Eren was the first one to call it _dating-dating_, after they passed that dubious line between friends and boyfriends, the 'something more' stage that is characterized by an almost frantic collecting of details, anecdotes, embarrassing family stories, tales and tidbits) they have spent probably a month's worth of nights sleeping in the same bed, and he has never had the pleasure of waking up with Eren next to him.

Something about it reminds him of the morning-after situations in seriously bad romcoms, only Eren isn't even _gone_ when Jean wakes up. More often than not he's in the living room and, on the mornings that they're at Jean's, eating some sugary cereal for breakfast. Jean used to keep them around for his niece, but now buys them because he knows Eren's roommate is one of those health nuts. One way to keep your relationship happy and healthy is to indulge your boyfriend's sweet tooth, it would appear.

(Armin isn't really a health nut; he just doesn't eat processed food. Eren thinks it's a deadly sin. Jean just doesn't really understand how someone can live on a vetmed student's budget and not eat processed foodstuffs at least sometimes, but that's Armin for you. The path of least resistance has never been his personal favorite.)

Jean is starting to wonder if he does something weird in his sleep, like recite Shakespeare or reenact fight scenes that he's recently choreographed. He wouldn't be surprised, because it's a secret to exactly no one that he eats, sleeps and breathes theatre and stage combat, but at the same time he seriously doubts that it's that. Eren can be a bit of a prick sometimes, and wouldn't be shy in informing Jean exactly of what it is he does nocturnally if it was objectionable. Eren is not the type to quietly retreat to the sofa and hope for a better outcome next time.

"Couldn't sleep?" Jean mumbles, because it's only seven o'clock in the morning and Eren is a very late sleeper, if Armin is to be believed, but somehow he's always up before Jean even on the days that Jean has to be to work by nine. It's Saturday, but it's a ten-out-of-twelve tech day and if he isn't there, the stage manager and director are going to be taking turns disemboweling him.

Eren shrugs, lifting another spoonful of Lucky Charms to his mouth. "No. Slept really well, actually. Why?" He looks at Jean over the rims of his glasses. There is a contact case that resides on Jean's bathroom counter and, as far as Jean can tell, lives in utter disuse because he never sees Eren putting them in, and Eren's mild astigmatism is easily solved by the glasses he wears at times.

"You went to bed at like one," Jean mutters, "and now you're up at seven."

"I'm used to getting only six hours," Eren says, "any more than that and my schedule is messed up." He lifts another spoonful to his mouth and stares at the television. Because Jean has the misfortune of dating a film student, he's watching some obscure French film. This, at least, is better than normal, because Jean can understand what is going on. More often than not he'll wake up to Eren watching something German (With the subtitles on) or Turkish (With the subtitles off) and gibberish blaring from his television.

He watches Eren watching the television, until Eren complains ("Babe, I'm gonna need you to stop staring at me from around the corner; it reminds me of _The Shining_.") and he finally comes into the living room and sits down next to Eren. He says, "What's this one about, then?"

Eren gestures with his spoon, "That guy is marrying that girl's sister, but he's in love with _her_…meanwhile she's pregnant with his baby and isn't telling him…Also, the landlord is involved somehow, I'm not sure. I'm still not great at French." A joke is said onscreen that Jean isn't sure Eren fully understands, because it's a play on words not easily understood by non-native speakers, but he laughs anyway. Jean watches his brown eyes crinkle.

"I'm gonna be back late," Jean mumbles, patting Eren's knee. "Are you gonna stick around or go back to yours? I can meet you up there and stay the night." They're getting to the point in their relationship where sleeping apart is becoming rare and somewhat difficult. Jean reckons that they're still several months away from all-out cohabitation, because solitude is not something that people like them give up easily, but he _can_ see it, maybe by the end of the school year. It's not hard to imagine.

Sighing, Eren shrugs his shoulders. "I dunno. I was gonna finish a paper today, and I can't really see carting my shit back home just to do that…but I'm running out of clean clothes." Eren's overnight bag has been slumped against the closet door in Jean's bedroom for a day and a half, thrown there before he and Eren fucked and went to sleep on Thursday night.

"You can always use the laundry room. Basement, first door you come to out of the elevator."

Eren makes a negative noise in the back of his throat. "Community laundries bug me. People pull your shit out and they don't change the lint traps. That's part of the reason why I didn't dorm again after my freshman year." He scrapes the bowl and lifts it to his mouth to drink the milk. Another thing that Armin doesn't keep around the house is dairy. _That_, more than anything, is what encourages Jean to play with his own personal _Armin isn't actually human_ theory.

"What was the rest of the reason?" Jean mumbles, because they're still kind of in that whole _getting to know you_ stage, considering the first twelve months of their acquaintanceship was steeped in animosity.

When Eren lowers the bowl from his face, his entire demeanor has changed, and he quietly mutters, "Assholes," and leaves it at that. He ejects himself from the sofa by his knee and goes into the kitchen to put his bowl in the sink. When he returns, Jean brings him close with hands wrapped around the backs of his thighs and presses his chin against Eren's navel.

"I know the feel," he murmurs. "People are…the guys on just any random dorm floor have some seriously warped worldviews, especially freshmen." He doesn't know why he's saying this, especially years after the fact, but when he was going through similar shit, it was nice to know that there were others going through the exact same. He's unsure if Eren ever got that kind of closure. "Living with twenty-seven other random guys is hard for anyone, much less people who are gay…or people who look different…or people who might not speak the language that great."

"Yeah," Eren sighs, running his fingers through Jean's hair, "it's kind of hard explaining to strangers that A: You're not a terrorist, and B: You actually _don't_ want to look at them in the shower. Like I would actually waste time and effort on any of those douchey straight boys."

Jean grunts in acknowledgement.

"It's just hard," Eren mumbles. "When you look different…and people are freaked out by it."

"You're gorgeous," Jean whispers, thinking about dark hair and tan skin and brown eyes, but also untrusting stares and Eren wilting under the glares of airport security the time they flew to his parents' for Christmas, embarrassment and shame mixing together as he was pulled aside by TSA and made to remove his shoes and coat as Jean stood there, utterly unaccosted. "Even back when we hated each other I thought so."

Eren huffs. "You don't understand."

"I know," Jean says gently, because he's fully aware that he's pale, blond and conventionally attractive, and aside from some questionable hairstyles in the past he has never received a crooked look from anyone just because of how he looked.

"No, I mean…" Eren sighs and drapes his arms over Jean's shoulders. "Can we just not? Can we stop talking about this? I'm sorry, it's just…not a conversation I want to be having right now."

"Yeah," Jean says, "yeah, sure. Sorry."

Shaking his head, Eren murmurs, "It's okay," and then, "I'm going to go take a shower."

"Okay," Jean replies, and lets Eren go. He watches him walk back into the bedroom, faint pink marks from where Jean's warm hands had been pressing against his warm thighs peeking out from under his sleep shorts. He tries watching the movie that is still on the television. Eventually, he decides that the plot is far too involved for him to catch up on this far in. Instead, he turns off the television and traces Eren's steps into the bathroom, strips and pulls back the curtain to step in.

He stands behind Eren for long moments before pressing his hands to his waist. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"You didn't," Eren assures. "It's just…y'know, a sensitive subject for me. Growing up without anyone around you looking like you is…it's hard."

Slowly, Jean mumbles, "You were born in Turkey, though." And lived there for at least the first six years of his life, if Eren's mother is to be believed, which Jean is pretty sure she _is_.

Eren lifts a hand and slaps it against Jean's bare shoulder, which with the water on both of their skin increases the bite of what would normally be a casual slap. "You know what I mean, asshole."

"I know, I know," Jean says, even though he kind of doesn't, and opens up a bottle of soap, starts with Eren's hair and ends kneeling at his feet, Eren's knee flung over his shoulder and his head between Eren's thighs.

* * *

When Jean gets home, Eren is asleep on the couch, textbook draped over his chest and glasses clinging precariously to the end of his nose. He huffs something akin to _six hours of sleep my ass_ and carefully pulls Eren's glasses off his face, setting them down on the coffee table. He's still in the pair of sweatpants he was changing into as Jean rushed out the door this morning, and a soft grey tee-shirt that Jean knows is his own because Eren did not attend Maria R. Sina High School.

He's peaceful and beautiful, and sleep is one of the only things that keeps Eren quiet for extended periods of time, so he lets him be, wanders back into the bedroom and sets his bags down. The clothes he wore to tech are pretty comfortable, mostly by necessity because working with the choreography of any of the five fight scenes in this particular play would not be possible without clothing he can move in. He does, however, feel somewhat uncomfortable and gross in general because the owners of the space they're in have never heard of air conditioning in their lives, it would seem, so he strips and gets in the shower for the second time in twelve hours. This time it's short, because there's no real reason to stay under the spray until the only water that can be pulled from the head is cold.

As he gets out, he braces himself against the counter so that he doesn't trip as he's stepping over the rim of the tub. That movement knocks something off. He grumbles a curse to himself, bends down and glares under the counter to figure out what fell.

It's Eren's contact case, unbroken thankfully. Jean gropes for it and stands back up straight once he has his hand around it, sets it back in its home on the left side of the counter, and wraps his towel around his waist.

The rush of cold air from the bedroom raises instant goosebumps on his skin when he opens the door, quickly ducking into the room and gathering pajamas. Dressing is a seconds-long process—tank top, pajama bottoms, old flannel button-up for warmth—after which he tosses his towel over the rack just inside the bathroom, and finds himself staring intently at Eren's contact case as he combs the tangles out of his hair.

Suddenly, he's realizing that he's never actually seen Eren put them in. They've been a permanent fixture in his bathroom for a month, and yet he's only ever known Eren to put on his glasses when he's having trouble seeing. Yet, he takes them everywhere, and every few weeks there is a new container of contact solution on the counter between Jean's shaving cream and the communal tube of toothpaste.

It's a weird-ass impulse, but Jean suddenly _needs_ to know if there are even contacts in there. He's not sure why Eren would fake owning contacts—his glasses are real; Jean has tried putting them on his own face enough to know that for certain—but for some reason, the urge is there, and he follows it. He's never had excellent impulse control. Most of the time it's okay, because Eren has half the impulse control of even the world's least patient mule, but he can't help but feel sneaky and invasive as he opens the contact container.

And finds that there are no contacts inside.

Jean's first thoughts are a kind of narrative a la William Shatner as Captain Kirk, something along the lines of _this…is…concerning…_followed up almost instantly by an explosive return to reality and near-panic at the idea that the contacts may have come out of the case when it fell after all. Thus, the next ten minutes are spent in a frantic rush to locate the lenses before they are stepped on or otherwise maimed or massacred. Jean owns a huge Mane Coon cat named Titan that once ate a needle and thread and has made it his life's work to torture Eren. It would come as a surprise to exactly no one if Titan ate Eren's contacts should they somehow end up within his reach.

Even as he searches, however, Jean begins to realize that the contacts are not on the bathroom floor. He also begins to realize that the case in his hand is not a gently- or barely-used case. The clasps that keep the two sides of the container shut are beginning to fail from what Jean can only assume have been repeated openings and closings, and the top and bottom no longer meet quite perfectly anymore for the same reason. Somehow, this case shows evidence of Eren opening and closing it every day for an indefinite amount of time despite Jean never having seen him open or close it.

He sits down on the bathroom floor, and wonders why he's been lied to, and that's where Eren finds him ten minutes later, stumbling in with his hair sticking up in all directions and his pants slipping down one hip.

"Hey," he says with surprise, furrowing his brows. "How long have you been home? I thought you would have woken me up. It's, like, Chinese food night. We were gonna eat Sesame Chicken and then I was gonna…go down on you to return the favor from earlier." Eren notices that there's something in Jean's balled up hands halfway through his speech. "What are you holding?"

Wordlessly, Jean unravels his fists.

Immediately, Eren says, "I can explain," and Jean watches as his entire body flushes. He's panicking, Jean thinks, and he should say something comforting, but he has no idea what.

Instead he says, "Why have you been lying to me? I literally don't understand. Why would someone lie about this kind of thing? If you lied about something as simple as that, what else have you been lying about? Are you some kind of…pathological liar? Christ, Eren, what the fuck?" He takes a deep breath, and tries to calm down, because Eren looks extremely distressed at this point. Slowly, Jean mumbles, "What color are your eyes? Really?" because that's the only explanation he can think of.

Eren doesn't answer the question, but he does fall to his knees beside Jean and say, "Jean, baby, please. I didn't want to deceive you, okay? Please, baby. It's just…there are some things that you're better off not knowing about people, and…and I didn't want you to think…"

"To think what?" Jean demands. "What could possibly be so bad, huh? So bad that you had to lie to me the entire time we've known each other?"

"I was afraid," Eren says slowly, "That you…would think I…would think I'm a freak."

"Why the fuck would I ever think that?" Jean demands, and he's trying to keep himself firmly in the place of _victim_, but it's hard when Eren looks so scared and worried and he's feeling shittier and shittier by the minute. The feeling of invasiveness has returned.

"I have…I've got…" Eren's lips move for several minutes without sound. "It's that…my eyes are…different. Two different colors."

"What, like…completely…?"

"Yes, and…I look…I look like a freak. Everyone thinks so, even my dad was freaked out by it, and I've worn contacts for it for as long as I can remember but…" He sighs, and falls back against the bathroom door. It slams closed behind him, because it wasn't exactly shut before, and he winces at the noise even as he tilts his head back to rest it against the wood and closes his eyes. "When people can't stop staring at you, and not in a good way…it sucks a lot."

"Why didn't you…"

"Tell you?" Eren snorts, opening one eye—Jean wonders what color that one is, below the contacts that turn his eyes the chocolate brown that is all Jean's ever known. "Let's face it. You hated me until six months ago, and you wouldn't have been kind if you knew at that time."

Although he grumbles, "I don't think you're giving me enough credit…" he knows himself, and he knows that the Jean Kirstein that existed twelve months ago would very likely have used something like this as ammunition. However, he also knows how easily he and Eren stopped hating each other—an unexpected shared interest, Eren's desire to learn French, midnight on a Tuesday and the glowing yellow from a campus street lamp turning Eren's hair golden—and he thinks that perhaps it would not have been a disaster.

"You never gave me a reason to trust you!" Eren cries, splaying his hands apart. "I showed my fucking roommate freshman year and he told his friends that I was a freak of fucking nature. I didn't want to go through that again."

"Well you can trust me now, can't you?" Jean demands, and he knows the answer is _yes_, because Eren has proven time and time again that he trusts Jean just as much as Mikasa and Armin, one of whom is his sister and the other a boy he's known since childhood. "Why did you continue to keep it from me?"

Eren sighs. "Because…because by the time I realized it was going to be an issue, we were already in too deep and I was afraid…well, I was afraid this would happen. That you'd accuse me of lying to you, freak out and start yelling. All of which have now happened, so…this might not have been well-planned, I'll admit." He looks away, at the floor of the bathroom, and begins picking at the shower mat. "I never wanted to hurt you."

Some part of Jean knows that, but he can't help but feel disorientated, as though he's had a rug pulled out from under him and he's still trying to make the world stop spinning around him. Eren picks at the mat for a long minute, and Jean stares at him. Quietly, even to his own ears, he says, "Show me."

"What?" Eren mumbles without looking up.

"Show me. Your eyes. Without your contacts. Take out your contacts and show me your eyes."

Eren stares at him as though he's said something horrifying, leaning his head back and then rapidly shaking it. "No. No, please baby. You don't want to see, okay? Trust me, it's bad, it's…"

"Please," Jean whispers, getting up on his knees, and Eren looks at him like he's been broken. It makes him feel horrible. Again he says, "Please," and sits back on his heels in front of Eren, hands on his knees, and presses his forehead against Eren's. "I'm not mad. Just…I want to see. I _need_ to see. Show me."

"I _can't_," Eren whispers.

"You _can_," Jean murmurs back, hands on the sides of Eren's face, pressing their foreheads even further together. "You can, okay?"

There is no reply, but Eren's breath speeds up in a way that Jean is familiar with, reminiscent of entering to battle, gathering as much air into the lungs as possible before entering the fray. He pulls away, because Eren is suddenly putting hard pressure on his clavicle, and splays back on his butt while Eren stands up and stares at himself in the bathroom mirror. It's several beats before Eren says, "Turn around. Don't watch me take them out. It'll be easier that way."

No reasonable argument comes to mind so Jean turns his face over his shoulder and closes his eyes. The urge to look back is a constant pressure in the pit of his stomach, and he's afraid that the urge will grow so strong that he'll involuntarily turn around, especially as he hers the twin snaps of Eren's contact case opening and closing. The silence that follows is almost agonizing and lasts for nearly three minutes. Finally, something rustles and he feels Eren's presence in front of him, low to the ground. Their knees touch.

"Just promise you won't freak out, okay?" Eren murmurs, and Jean looks up to see Eren covering his eyes.

"Okay," Jean mumbles.

Then Eren lowers his hands, and Jean can't breathe for a moment.

One eye, the left one—the one Jean was looking at earlier, wondering about—is a bright, striking green. It reminds Jean of laying on the grass on hot, cloudless summer days. The other is a more subdued hazel-green, like the wood of the bathroom door. It compliments Eren's olive skin tone well.

Obviously, because today marks Jean's turn for the entire world to be against him, Eren interprets his silence completely wrong. He shrinks back, sitting between his own feet on the floor, and mutters, "I know…I look creepy without my lenses. What a weirdo."

Some part of Jean wants to comment that they're both twenty-four years old and the world _weirdo_ should no longer be in their vocabulary. That part of himself does not control his motor functions at the moment, and is barely a passing thought once he gets his hands on Eren, on either side of his face as earlier, and presses their foreheads together again. The mixture of colors creates a strange, enticing kaleidoscope of color as hazel mixes with blue, blurry this close up.

He's beautiful. He's more beautiful than Jean ever thought he could find another person.

"Eren," he murmurs, "shut up."

They kiss then, and Eren's tears trail down his own cheeks. He wipes them away with his thumbs, halfway frantic because he hates it when Eren cries, actually _hates_ it with his entire being. When he pulls away and presses their foreheads together, he murmurs, "I love your eyes," in French, and Eren lets out a shaky breath. Jean knows Eren is aware of what he's just said. Then he whispers, "Don't cry, baby," and Eren only sobs and cries harder.

It's okay, though. Jean gets it, and keeps telling Eren he's beautiful, so gorgeous, until he thinks even Eren starts to believe it.

* * *

Notes: Based off of Moeskine's Erejean art on Tumblr. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed!


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